Noir is premised on the audience's need to see failure risked, courted, and sometimes won ; the American dream becomes a nightmare, one strangely more seductive and euphoric than the optimism it repudiates ....... Noir provided losing with a mystique.
Ann Douglas
Vanity Fair
2007
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Noir City publications
Storm Warning
Basically, i'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Frank Sinatra
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unknown
McCoy's novel is indisputably the best example of absurdist existentialism in American fiction. Dismissed in America essentially as a "penny dreadful" at it's first appearance, it nevertheless found, as did West's works, popularity among a small band of French existentialists who recognized it's beauty and power.
Lee J Richmond
excerpt from
A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance :
Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses Don't They ?
1971
